Welcome to Documill – Stella Petersen

Documill has seen considerable growth during the past years and with new business come new faces. In this series, we turn the spotlight on those who have chosen to join Documill to further their careers. 

You must go on a long journey before you can really find out how wonderful home is.”

It’s a quote from Moomin adventurer Snufkin that I’m sure many Finns can relate to. And for Documill’s “new” Engagement Lead this rings particularly true. 

I do have to put “new” in quotation marks because this post is long overdue, as Stella has been with us for nearly a year now. First joining us remote from the tropical island of Mauritius before finding her way back North. And dare I say, back home.  

Stella Petersen, then, has been on a long but logical journey that has led her to Documill. 

It should be illegal to be inefficient

Stella’s adventure began as a lawyer trying to, by her own admission, having to work as inefficiently as possible, so she could bill as many hours as the client could stomach. 

Back in France, where she had got her law degree, Stella quickly grew frustrated with a legal industry that had no desire to change its greedy ways. Even while it was obvious that great, helpful, software and tech was readily available. Digitalization and automation, for example, bring the promise of speed and efficiency – the opposite of what makes traditional law firms so profitable. 

She realized that to practice law the way she wanted to, in a way that’s mutually beneficial to both the firm and client, she had to join a legal service provider.

Be the change you want to see…

Stella found such a firm on the idyllic island of Mauritius.  

Unlike traditional law firms, legal service providers do not bill per hour but instead offer a fixed price arrangement. And to be profitable, it makes sense to them to provide these services from an offshore location. 

Stella’s desire to make a difference extends through her personal life as well. While in Mauritius, she was part of a street team that cared for the roughly 300 000 stray dogs that inhabit the island. That’s about one stray dog for every 3 people that live there.  

A big part of the dog population control is to ensure that they don’t reproduce that rapidly, so Stella got involved with the sponsoring of the all-important sterilization campaigns. She’d also help pick up dogs get them to a vet and feed them and find adoptive homes for them, often in Europe – and, because of course she did, she took a couple of dogs home with her when she moved back to Finland. 

…and then push the boundaries

But back to business. While the ethics of working for a legal service provider certainly had served her better, it was clear to Stella that further improvements could be made. For instance, she thought that, with the right tech, it should be possible to draft a contract in minutes rather than hours. 

To explore the possibilities of tech further, she moved on to an IT consultancy whose aim was to modernize the legal industry. Here she was exposed to all the wonderful solutions that can be provided with the help of software. Think contract lifecycle management, document generation, electronic signatures, and more. The possibilities for improvement seemed endless.

Find the answer at the core 

From there on, there was yet one step to take – to join a software provider and directly impact how the software is both made and implemented. And luckily for us, Stella was also looking to move back to Finland, where she applied for the job of Engagement Lead at Documill’s customer support team – and got it. 

Okay, but what does an engagement lead do? In essence, the same as what Stella has been doing her entire career – ensuring that the work gets done as efficiently as possible, while enabling her wonderful team to provide the best support possible. 

Judging from the Salesforce AppExchange reviews we’ve received over the past year, she and her team have done an admirable job. 

About working with these customers, Stella has the following to say: “The moments that I love the most is when we sit down with a customer and really solve their existing problems and find new areas, where we can help them with problems they had not previously considered. You can just see their eyes light up as they realize, “omg you can do that as well”.” 

Welcome to the team, Stella, and welcome home.